PS3 has lost to Wii and Xbox360 (discuss)

[Yaka]

well when sony worded 10yrs they were being sly, "Ps1 life cycle" ended just befiore ps3 came out, ps2 is still alive and in production after year 5 sony begins making murmurs about new consoles.

wont be too suprised if MS pips em again to the first release tho atm they could handle a joint north america/europe release of a new console sony on the other hand will have to go tying up deals first.

 

[MYstIC G]

The problem with popularising Digital Distribution and downgrading Optical Drives or other Large Format Storage Media is that it draws us back towards a locked down system. If all your stuff comes from someone who specifies the format that it arrives in, etc. eventually you become reliant. At the moment you can choose to download a game or choose to buy one, etc.

 

[cHodAX]

Is going to be interesting to see what level of hardware we get next time around, they need to be much more agressive with memory amounts and Sony better not make the mistakes with video memory subsystems again. Can see PS3 going with something like a 4ghz 28nm optimised version of Cell again though, give it a better GPU, more memory and a better memory architecture and it will be plenty good whilst affording solid backwards compatibilty without the need of extra hardware. Fully expect Microsoft to go down the PPC route again too, IBM have developed some interested stuff over the last 7 years and to be fair CPU hasn't been the problem for either company this generation, it has all been about GPU and memory limitations. You cannot do 1080p real justice when working with such a small memory footprint.

 

[cHodAX]

The problem with popularising Digital Distribution and downgrading Optical Drives or other Large Format Storage Media is that it draws us back towards a locked down system. If all your stuff comes from someone who specifies the format that it arrives in, etc. eventually you become reliant. At the moment you can choose to download a game or choose to buy one, etc.

I agree on those points but also how are the ISP's and infrastructure people going to react when their networks become swamped with tens of millions of games being downloaded a week. 15gb a game on average next time around? The bandwidth requirements are massive and why should the network bare the costs? They moan like fuck about iPlayer and have very stringent 'fair use' policies for bandwidth, one game would break the limits for nearly all the mainstream packages.

 

[Yaka]

15gb is gonna be low, most A list games will be more than double that,
maybe theyll go into part owning some isp's. didnt ms do that with ntl prior to the xbox coming out?

 

[cHodAX]

15gb is gonna be low, most A list games will be more than double that,
maybe theyll go into part owning some isp's. didnt ms do that with ntl prior to the xbox coming out?

The FMV heavy ones will as witnessed by God of War 3 and UFC 2010, that said though normal games which are the vast majority of the market will be 15gb or less because 1080p generally doesn't need insane detail textures. Most PS3 games actually come in at well under 10gb when you rip the vids out, even top end PC games designed to run well beyond 1080p with ultra high detail textures and models don't come in at beyond 15gb.

 

[Yaka]

well if we are gonna be seeing games with the graphics close to Epics nextgen unrealengine3 samaritian demo then its gonna be larger than 15gb going by whats been done via u3 engine


YouTube - ‪Unreal Engine 3: Official Samaritan Demo‬‏


shit thing bout thinking about ps4 will be prolly be the epic long wait for GT6 get the feeling it will be much longer than GT5

 

[MYstIC G]

I agree on those points but also how are the ISP's and infrastructure people going to react when their networks become swamped with tens of millions of games being downloaded a week. 15gb a game on average next time around? The bandwidth requirements are massive and why should the network bare the costs? They moan like fuck about iPlayer and have very stringent 'fair use' policies for bandwidth, one game would break the limits for nearly all the mainstream packages.

The other problem with this model is that ISP's still don't have the "conduit" protection that other services enjoy (phone). Say we get another US nutjob lawyer that says GTA5 is illegal and then gets the distribution network shutdown as a result, etc, etc, etc.

 

[cHodAX]

The other problem with this model is that ISP's still don't have the "conduit" protection that other services enjoy (phone). Say we get another US nutjob lawyer that says GTA5 is illegal and then gets the distribution network shutdown as a result, etc, etc, etc.

Good point. Things like this around bound to crop up, I will be gutted if we lose optical media before ALL the kinks are worked out. Grabbing a 50gb disc is alot less fucking around than downloading a 50gb game on the average UK internet connection of 3 mbit/s. Imagine the wait, pushing 2 days by rushed reckoning.

 

[Billargh]

The way they name consoles these days is so fucking tedious, I wish each new console would have a new name instead of the same one with a larger number at the end.

 

[Chronictank]

The way they name consoles these days is so fucking tedious, I wish each new console would have a new name instead of the same one with a larger number at the end.

surely what you are suggesting would be more tedious :S

 

[Chronictank]

Sony already stated the PS4 was going to be an iteration of the PS3, they paid out the nose up front in R & D for the Cell processor and getting bluray to be the industry standard so the next refresh won't be as expensive imo.

I think they are going to stick to BD but with a faster drive (e.g. BDXL) and they have already proven the scalability of the cell so i think they will increase the number of cores and possibly a minor clock increase.
Rumour has it that they are aiming for 1 TeraFLOPS of performance (PS3 does 204) with 4 PPEs and 32 SPEs
PS4 Cell Chip Capable Of 1 TeraFLOPS

Going out on a limb i don't think it will have a separate GPU doing all the processing but instead the Cell taking a large chunk of it (since that is what they said it was indented for originally but couldn't get it to work so dropped in a last min GPU) now that's a lot of horsepower if they get it working.

I really hope they throw a shed load of memory in it as that seems to be the real failing of the current gen

Whatever happens they aren't going to follow their last strategy of writing a blank cheque and seeing what came out the end so don't expect a new cell architecture but rather a optimised refresh of the current imo

 

[ECA]

I wonder what microsoft will do though, that's the more interesting thing.

LA Noire on xbox was 3 discs already, and 1 BD for PS3, it puts them in the position of going digital downloads ( imo awful mistake given the average net connection and size of new games ), or pay up to sony.

What other option do they really have?

 

[Ctuchik]

Good point. Things like this around bound to crop up, I will be gutted if we lose optical media before ALL the kinks are worked out.

Will that ever happen tho? We're not talking one or two companies that needs to work together to do that, we're talking most of the entire internet business...

 

[Chronictank]

I wonder what microsoft will do though, that's the more interesting thing.

LA Noire on xbox was 3 discs already, and 1 BD for PS3, it puts them in the position of going digital downloads ( imo awful mistake given the average net connection and size of new games ), or pay up to sony.

What other option do they really have?

I would say they will just upgrade the parts in the xbox and scale it up that way tbh, Microsoft generally seem to play it safe.
I would guess they put in a whole bunch of security crap tho

 

[ECA]

I would say they will just upgrade the parts in the xbox and scale it up that way tbh, Microsoft generally seem to play it safe.
I would guess they put in a whole bunch of security crap tho

Uh what the hell you talkin about willis.

 

[cHodAX]

Sony already stated the PS4 was going to be an iteration of the PS3, they paid out the nose up front in R & D for the Cell processor and getting bluray to be the industry standard so the next refresh won't be as expensive imo.

I think they are going to stick to BD but with a faster drive (e.g. BDXL) and they have already proven the scalability of the cell so i think they will increase the number of cores and possibly a minor clock increase.
Rumour has it that they are aiming for 1 TeraFLOPS of performance (PS3 does 204) with 4 PPEs and 32 SPEs
PS4 Cell Chip Capable Of 1 TeraFLOPS

Going out on a limb i don't think it will have a separate GPU doing all the processing but instead the Cell taking a large chunk of it (since that is what they said it was indented for originally but couldn't get it to work so dropped in a last min GPU) now that's a lot of horsepower if they get it working.

I really hope they throw a shed load of memory in it as that seems to be the real failing of the current gen

Whatever happens they aren't going to follow their last strategy of writing a blank cheque and seeing what came out the end so don't expect a new cell architecture but rather a optimised refresh of the current imo

Ok, where to start. First CELL I think. That many SPE are complete overkill and total nightmare to code for, what CELL needs is more PPE and more clockspeed would help too. The most important thing by a country mile though is a sensible memory architecture. Either gubloads of dedicated memory for CPU or ideally a unified memory system that gives a ton of flexibilty for developers who might want to tradeoff a bit of visual fidelity for more a more complex gaming experience or vice versa. Have said it before and will say it again, CELL and is crippled by it's memory architecture and also a GPU that wasn't designed with 1080p in mind.

For storage, Bluray is still plenty good and will remain so, higher speeds would be ideal though. Direct downloads are still not good enough, the networks cannot cope and won't be able to handle the scale of delivery required for some considerable time.

As for memory amounts, I get a feeling it will be 2gb and nickle/diming will kick in again. If they want to future proof the next generation they need to at least match what is inside an average shipping PC today and that is 4gb. Sadly they will do as last time, look at PC and then use half what a viable gaming PC is using. It happened in 2005, it will happen again in 2012/13.

 

[cHodAX]

I wonder what microsoft will do though, that's the more interesting thing.

LA Noire on xbox was 3 discs already, and 1 BD for PS3, it puts them in the position of going digital downloads ( imo awful mistake given the average net connection and size of new games ), or pay up to sony.

What other option do they really have?

The BD licence is comparatively small considering the costs of delivering a robust download facility and actually running that service, they are already paying a DVD licence anyway so why not just bite the bullet and licence BD? If it is all about saving face then they are a bigger bunch of lamers than I ever imagined.

 

[cHodAX]

I would say they will just upgrade the parts in the xbox and scale it up that way tbh, Microsoft generally seem to play it safe.
I would guess they put in a whole bunch of security crap tho

Architecture-wise I think that is exactly what will happen, a newer/faster version of the cpu with a much much more modern GPU that can chew through 1080p with ease. That is all that is required, Super-HD is still on a very distant horizon, 1080p will be with us for at least a decade.

 

[MYstIC G]

I don't think an xbox with Bluray would damage M$ to be honest. If it's the standard format for the next generation then you just have to roll with the punches.

 

[ST^]

Ok, where to start. First CELL I think. That many SPE are complete overkill and total nightmare to code for, what CELL needs is more PPE and more clockspeed would help too. The most important thing by a country mile though is a sensible memory architecture. Either gubloads of dedicated memory for CPU or ideally a unified memory system that gives a ton of flexibilty for developers who might want to tradeoff a bit of visual fidelity for more a more complex gaming experience or vice versa. Have said it before and will say it again, CELL and is crippled by it's memory architecture and also a GPU that wasn't designed with 1080p in mind.

For storage, Bluray is still plenty good and will remain so, higher speeds would be ideal though. Direct downloads are still not good enough, the networks cannot cope and won't be able to handle the scale of delivery required for some considerable time.

As for memory amounts, I get a feeling it will be 2gb and nickle/diming will kick in again. If they want to future proof the next generation they need to at least match what is inside an average shipping PC today and that is 4gb. Sadly they will do as last time, look at PC and then use half what a viable gaming PC is using. It happened in 2005, it will happen again in 2012/13.

How is PS3's "memory architecture" not "sensible"? "visual fidelity" versus "complex gaming experience" what are you on about? What does that even mean?

 

[Chronictank]

Uh what the hell you talkin about willis.

about which bit?

 

[Chronictank]

Ok, where to start. First CELL I think. That many SPE are complete overkill and total nightmare to code for, what CELL needs is more PPE and more clockspeed would help too.

I think they might have hit a wall in the cell clockspeed so it will be cores over clockspeed imo, rumour has it they can get it to 4Ghz but have heat dissipation issues at any higher
The future is parallel processing in the general computing world so i suspect consoles will go down the same route, games courses in uni's have already started pushing in this direction in terms of training

The most important thing by a country mile though is a sensible memory architecture. Either gubloads of dedicated memory for CPU or ideally a unified memory system that gives a ton of flexibilty for developers who might want to tradeoff a bit of visual fidelity for more a more complex gaming experience or vice versa. Have said it before and will say it again, CELL and is crippled by it's memory architecture and also a GPU that wasn't designed with 1080p in mind.

Couldn't agree with you more about unified memory, sadly i am not convinced they will do it as it would mean they would need a lot of expensive memory rather than some expensive and a lot of cheap. Really depends if they are cost-cutting i guess

For storage, Bluray is still plenty good and will remain so, higher speeds would be ideal though. Direct downloads are still not good enough, the networks cannot cope and won't be able to handle the scale of delivery required for some considerable time.

Reason i mention this is for the user experience, is it worth the extra? i guess that will be down to the sony bods i guess
Faster disk read means less "installing" to hard disk (see metal gear solid as a prime example)

As for memory amounts, I get a feeling it will be 2gb and nickle/diming will kick in again. If they want to future proof the next generation they need to at least match what is inside an average shipping PC today and that is 4gb. Sadly they will do as last time, look at PC and then use half what a viable gaming PC is using. It happened in 2005, it will happen again in 2012/13.

Don't know if i agree 100% to be honest, the PS3 has faster memory (xdr against ddr) than in the average pc with a lower OS footprint so they can get away with less so 2gb should be more than sufficient (unless ofc they use shared in which case they might need a little more)
Fingers crossed they throw in 4gb though that would be a beast of a machine

How is PS3's "memory architecture" not "sensible"? "visual fidelity" versus "complex gaming experience" what are you on about? What does that even mean?

simplest possible terms as i understand it
Graphics (term very loosely used) against Physics, AI and so on
If there is a single memory pool (unified memory) then the developer could choose how much to use for each rather than be forced to use a set amount dictated by hardware

 

[cHodAX]

How is PS3's "memory architecture" not "sensible"? "visual fidelity" versus "complex gaming experience" what are you on about? What does that even mean?

PS3 has a split memory setup, 50/50 for cpu/gpu. The GPU does not have direct access to CPU memory and some pretty fiddly timing workarounds have to be implemented to get around the problem when the GPU needs to access textures etc from the CPU's memory in the event that GPU memory is full.

As for visual fidelity, well that is pretty obvious, higher poly models and higher resolution textures combined with advanced shaders and lighting techniques, all of which require a great deal of memory accessible by the GPU. A large unified memory architecture makes sense when both the GPU and CPU need to access all those assets and work on them at will, as has been stated on a good number of occasions when that situation arises on PS3 those awkward workarounds have to be implemented. It hurts performance to do it the way PS3 does unless you have an abundance of memory and GPU/CPU never need to access the memory of each other, it also adds alot of code tweaking due to timing issues and we all know that developers burn though money so the last thing they need is to be coding around a problem that should not have been there in the first place.

Regardless, I don't expect it to happen again with PS4, enough developers went public on the problem a few years back and Sony saw the effect it had on development times.

Oh before I forget and you pull me up, complex gaming experience. When the issues arose with GPU memory being full the developers had to use the memory workarounds and start chipping away at CPU memory as an overflow. Now unfortunately at launch GameOS already had a very large memory footprint that sat in CPU memory, then the game code had to be squeezed in which left little if any available for GPU overflow. Developers were then forced to either refine game code, remove features or as we already know happened, use lower resolution textures and avoid having to use system memory at all. That is why certain cross platform games soon after launch looked far worse on PS3, the textures were either lower res or more heavily compressed. Fortunately with firmware upgrades Sony significantly shrank the GameOS memory footprint over time which freed more space up for game code or GPU use. It was very much an issue though as developers had to make choices they didn't on X360 because of the unified memory architecture and the flexibility it afford them.

 

[cHodAX]

I think they might have hit a wall in the cell clockspeed so it will be cores over clockspeed imo, rumour has it they can get it to 4Ghz but have heat dissipation issues at any higher
The future is parallel processing in the general computing world so i suspect consoles will go down the same route, games courses in uni's have already started pushing in this direction in terms of training


Couldn't agree with you more about unified memory, sadly i am not convinced they will do it as it would mean they would need a lot of expensive memory rather than some expensive and a lot of cheap. Really depends if they are cost-cutting i guess


Reason i mention this is for the user experience, is it worth the extra? i guess that will be down to the sony bods i guess
Faster disk read means less "installing" to hard disk (see metal gear solid as a prime example)


Don't know if i agree 100% to be honest, the PS3 has faster memory (xdr against ddr) than in the average pc with a lower OS footprint so they can get away with less so 2gb should be more than sufficient (unless ofc they use shared in which case they might need a little more)
Fingers crossed they throw in 4gb though that would be a beast of a machine


simplest possible terms as i understand it
Graphics (term very loosely used) against Physics, AI and so on
If there is a single memory pool (unified memory) then the developer could choose how much to use for each rather than be forced to use a set amount dictated by hardware

IBM have pushed PPC to 5ghz on newer processes iirc, by the time PS4 goes into manufacturing I would imagine 28nm or even 22nm will be standard which should allowed CELL to hit 4ghz or higher with lower power draw than a 45nm CELL at 3.2ghz. Certainly it should be capable of going way beyond what the original 65nm CELL was capable of.

I take your point with O/S footprint being smaller than a gaming PC but remember we are talking about building a machine capable of staying current until roughly 2020 and I just don't see how 2gb manages that. Both MS and Sony nikel and dimed this generation on memory, 1gb would have allowed both to have flown to far greater heights. I can understand why Sony did it with PS3's build cost at launch, Microsoft have no such excuses for a lack of bravery though.

 

[Chronictank]

You are absolutely right i just see the Sony accountants getting a much bigger say in the next gen after all that has happened and we all know which direction they will push towards.
They really are in a great position since they have done the hard work of a new architecture with the PS3 and all the issues that come with going to something completely new so moving forward the dev costs will be a hell of alot lower. If they pull it off they might even make a profit straight off the bat for each console

As always though a console is only as strong as its starting lineup of games so this all might be mute hehe

 

[soze]

I always though the next console was just going to add 3D gaming. And faster load times would not go amiss.

 

[MYstIC G]

Ugh, fuck off with 3D already.

 

[old.user4556]

Ugh, fuck off with 3D already.

YouTube - ‪Gospel - Amen‬‏

 

[Yaka]

wot ever the specs of the ps4 may be on paper, thyel prolly chop stuff in the end, look at the NGP game devs were happy with it specialy with the mem now thats being downsized